The Night Of's Riz Ahmed Says Airport Security "Attacked" Him in Emotional Essay on Hollywood's Race Barriers

Actor opened up in a powerful piece excerpted and shared by The Guardian

Riz Ahmed's ascent to Hollywood stardom has been far from easy. 

In a passionate essay written for upcoming book The Good Immigrant and excerpted by The Guardian, The Night Of actor details multiple occasions in which he says he was unfairly targeted because of his ethnicity. Ahmed draws comparisons between airports and film auditions, two environments he writes share a unique connection in that both have typecasted him time and time again as a terrorist. 

"Part of the reason I became an actor was the promise that I might be able to help stretch these necklaces, and that the teenage version of myself might breathe a little easier as a result," the 33-year-old explains of the often-debilitating stereotypes he wears around his neck as a British-Pakistini man. 

In one particularly frightening incident, Ahmed writes that upon returning from a film festival where his 2006 drama The Road to Guantánamo won an award, airport security, "frogmarched me to an unmarked room where they insulted, threatened, and then attacked me."

Coupled with his inability to secure roles that were "not intrinsically linked to his race" and producers' claims that "they had nothing I could feasibly act in," Ahmed left the UK for America in hopes of reaching what he calls the "Promised Land." 

But Hollywood afforded the then-emerging actor similarly negative encounters in the audition room, writing, "...They involved the experience of being typecast, and when that happens enough, you internalize the role written for you by others. Now, like an over-eager method actor, I was struggling to break character." 

Since landing his breakout role in the critically-acclaimed HBO mini-series, he says, "Now, both at auditions and airports, I find myself on the right side of the same velvet rope by which I was once clothes-lined," later clarifying, "But this isn't a success story."

Ahmed touches on the irony of his newfound fame, concluding, "These days it's likely that no one resembles me in the waiting room for an acting audition, and the same is true of everyone being waved through with me at US immigration. In both spaces, my exception proves the rule."